Summer Reading Club Post Number Two

Motivated again by Tacoma Reads Together and the junior adult choice for 2013.

 

The Golden Age of Children’s Literature, 1865-1914, followed the Civil War and was led by interests that wished to shape the new history and the new outlook of the United States.  In Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in America’s Children’s Books, Jerry Griswold discusses elements that motivated the publishers and authors - the horrors of the Civil War, changing technology, institutional concern with child welfare, among others.  Jerry Griswold’s discussion often includes psychological analysis and the theme of oedipal development of the major characters while also discussing the same theme, oedipal development, as an analogy for the aging and growth of the United States.  Our present outlook on Mental Health involves very little Freud.  However, the book discussion remains lively and important – he describes how very alike in plot development twelve books are - The Wizard of Oz, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Tarzan of the Apes, The Prince and the Pauper, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Little Women, Toby Tyler, Hans Brinker, The Secret Garden, and Pollyanna.  (2013 is the hundredth anniversary of the book Pollyanna.)